


Let Him Eat Cake

by threewalls



Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Cake, Community: parallelsfic, Dessert & Sweets, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Empathy, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Science Fiction, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hisoka wants more power. Tsuzuki wants dessert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Him Eat Cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phoebe_Zeitgeist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebe_Zeitgeist/gifts).



> This is set after Gensoukai arc (explicitly) and Kamakura Hen arc (implicitly). It does not take any of Matsushita's recent chapters into account.

They stop the war between the dragons with Tsuzuki's magic power of asking nicely.

Hisoka comes back with no more offensive firepower than the warm fuzzy feelings of having helped Tsuzuki bond even more with his Shikigami. His, not Hisoka's. (RIP Riko, and let's not talk about Kurikara. Choosing to do something that happened to also be something advised by a mere human didn't count as submission in Kurikara's book.) Now, they're all one big happy family. Now, Hisoka has thirteen beings trying to protect him, instead of just the one person he wanted to become strong enough to protect.

Now, Hisoka saves his smiles for Tsuzuki, his civility for Konoe, and his temper for anyone in the office who cannot limit their interactions to twenty words or less.

"So, Bon, why did you run away to Gensoukai, ne?"

"I wanted more power," Hisoka replies, through gritted teeth.

"More power?" Watari asks. "I can bring my doodles to life. You can make people feel things-- but you wanted _more_ power?"

Hisoka narrows his eyes; what he wants right now is the ability to throw Watari-san across the break room. Why empathy? Why not telekinesis?

Watari exhales through his teeth, waves at Hisoka with the spoon from his coffee mug.

"That's what I'm talking about," he says. "Or did you think everyone cleared the break room on the strength of your glares? Though those have improved."

"You have an idea."

"Oh, I've got lots of ideas, Bon."

* * *

For the duration of his tea break, Hisoka lets Watari-san speculate. It's not like Watari expects Hisoka to participate in the discussion, so he can drink the tea he came there for, and in the end, Watari is not the mad scientist Hisoka takes issue with.

The next day, Tsuzuki is all but crying happy tears behind him when Hisoka takes the jewel case Watari offers him without glaring or spite. It's half a dozen DVDs with the title scribbled on with Watari's barely legible scrawl, and one that's just marked "e-books: sci-fi." Research materials.

The tears come a week later at the cheapest bakery counter in Seibu. Hisoka gets a Sacher Torte square for himself and lets Tsuzuki's choices fill up the rest of the box. It takes them forty minutes to get back out to the station, to conceal their disappearance from the mortal plane in the evening rush hour crowd.

It's summer in Chijou, sweltering humid July. Hisoka's skin itches even after they return to Meifu's eternal spring.

Hisoka has always thought of emotions as something done to him, his empathy a passive ability, useful for detection, not useful for all the thoughts and feelings that were never his own and Hisoka never wanted to have felt. A liability when Hisoka wanted to be strong. Never again.

* * *

Tsuzuki scrapes and then stacks his empty dinner dishes in Hisoka's sink-- and then he shoots a look across the kitchenette, straight at the fridge, at Hisoka's palm flat against the white-painted metal. Tsuzuki deflates to a crouch on the kitchen floor.

"You're going to help me try something tonight. Training."

"Training?"

Tsuzuki stays on the floor, though his expression has shifted. Confusion makes Tsuzuki look eighteen rather than eight (rather than twenty-six). Hisoka wonders if Tsuzuki's over-expressiveness will be a plus or minus in this case, but he can't imagine asking anyone else. He can't imagine telling anyone about this, not until he's stronger.

"With dessert afterwards," Hisoka says.

He's almost certain that Tsuzuki will say yes. Dessert is a bonus, a sweetener to the deal, if you pardon the pun. Hisoka could leverage guilt to get Tsuzuki to agree, but manipulating a strong emotion into another seems like it would be a more difficult first attempt than shifting Tsuzuki's baseline calm to something else.

"All three pieces, if you want."

Hisoka is going to make Tsuzuki feel things Tsuzuki doesn't mean to feel tonight. He needs to be stronger. But it's still better if Tsuzuki says "yes", isn't it? The fridge door is cool under his hand.

"Ok," Tsuzuki agrees, suddenly on his feet again, suddenly _taller_ ; the kitchen counter presses sharp into Hisoka's back.

But Hisoka steps away from it, steps forward. He's not going to let the past stop him now.

"So!" Tsuzuki asks, hands clasped behind his back. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just stand there," Hisoka says. "And tell me how it feels."

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this. Muraki does not appear, but I felt he was implicit in much of this.


End file.
